Going Regional: Utilizing the Unique Tools of the Inter-American Commission
By JoAnn Kamuf Ward, Lecturer-in-Law, Columbia Law School & Associate Director of the Human Rights in the U.S. Project at the Law School’s Human Rights Institute
In two weeks, human rights advocates from across the Americas will travel to Washington to D.C. to present some of the most pressing human rights challenges they face to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in a series of fifty hearings, spanning four days and covering twenty countries. U.S.-based advocates will be an integral part of the mix, addressing U.S.-specific issues as well as political rights, labor, health, security, and freedom of expression and association throughout the member states of the OAS.
Three of the Commission’s thematic hearings will focus specifically on the U.S.:
- Human rights situation of migrant and refugee children and families
- Public debt, fiscal policy and poverty in Puerto Rico.
These thematic hearings reflect a growing trend of U.S. advocacy before the Commission. In the past thirty years, U.S. advocates have filed more than 130 cases and communications with the IACHR, resulting in landmark decisions, including in Lenahan (Gonzales) vs. U.S. and Wayne Smith, Hugo Armendariz et al vs. US. Indeed, US advocates are most familiar with the IACHR as the one venue that accepts cases solely on the basis that the U.S. has violated human rights norms.
But the emphasis on cases belies the fact that the IACHR offers a number of tools to advance human rights accountability. Thematic hearings are one such tool. These hearings can address the same substantive issues as a case, but they can be broader in scope and look beyond individualized circumstances. Individuals, organizations, and coalitions, can request thematic hearings, which provide an opportunity to address structural, systemic, and cross-cutting issues, and can address issues in one or more countries in the OAS region.
To date, the IACHR has held close to forty thematic hearings focused squarely on U.S. issues. Recent hearings have addressed solitary confinement, juvenile justice, the U.S. torture and rendition program, indigenous rights, racial discrimination, rights of migrants and farm workers, excessive use of force, stand your ground laws, the right to water, and Guantanamo, among other concerns. Currently, the IACHR receives more requests for thematic hearings on the U.S. than it can accommodate.
So, how can hearings advance domestic human rights advocacy, and how do they work? There is surprisingly little public information on these topics. The only written record that the Commission creates after a hearing is a press release that mentions all the topics covered in a period of sessions, and the hearings themselves are webcast.
In an effort to demystify the thematic hearings process, and to highlight how U.S. advocates are using them, the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute recently published a thematic hearings resource guide. This guide uncovers a number of key insights into ways that advocates can effectively shape hearing requests; maximize the impact of hearings, and leverage them in future advocacy. The lessons drawn from savvy human rights advocacy relating to national security, migrants rights, criminal justice reform, and the right to water, illustrate how U.S. advocates use thematic hearings as a platform to raise awareness of human rights issues; to call for specific government action to respect and protect human rights; and to strengthen collaboration with local, national, and regional partners. In addition to distilling the lessons learned from these examples, the guide offers recommendations on ways that thematic hearings can reinforce advocacy at the United Nations, and focus the Commission on a particular human rights concern moving forward. Indeed, thematic hearings requests themselves can inform the activities of the Commission as a whole, as well as the work individual IACHR Commissioners, each of which is assigned to one of the following ten thematic areas:
- Rights of Indigenous Peoples
- Rights of Women
- Rights of Migrants
- Freedom of Expression
- Rights of the Child
- Human Rights Defenders
- Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty
- Rights of Persons of African Descent and Against Racial Discrimination
- Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Trans, Bisexual, and Intersex Persons
- Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
By situating requests for hearings within the context of the Commission’s past activities, strategic priorities, and recent international legal developments, advocates can increase the chances that the Commission might take up a given issue. The Commission’s annual reports, thematic reports, past hearings, case decisions and recent civil society questionnaires all offer helpful guidance into the issues of particular interest to the Commission— information that can help shape hearing requests.
A review of the recent work of the Commission highlights an increasing focus on economic, social, and cultural rights, as well as lgbti issues, which provide new openings for advocacy. Building on the lessons learned from past hearings, U.S. advocates can continue to leverage thematic hearings as a vital component of efforts to build the record on human rights in the United States to address these and other human rights issues. The Institute’s resource guide is a useful point of departure to better understand the benefits and limitations of thematic hearings, and the ways they can enhance human rights accountability.